Free measures for dissertations

This page contains information on a range of measures (psychometric tests) freely available to psychology students, and the formats in which they are available. Please note this is a guide only and is not intended to be a definitive list. You are strongly encouraged to read the academic papers that accompany the tests and read around these to make sure the test is right for your purposes.

Your choice of measure should be discussed with your supervisor. Your supervisor must approve the measures you intend to use before you use them to collect data. If the questionnaire you need is accessible only by contacting the author, you must check with your supervisor before doing so. At the end of the page are links to other databases that contain many more measures if you can’t find what you are looking for here.

Links will take you direct to online resources. Please remember to reference these correctly if you use them. Please click here to contact a psychology technician, or speak to your supervisor.

Where tests are marked with an asterisk (*) these are paper copies subject to copyright and held in the psychology lab store – if you would like to use any of these you will need to get approval from your supervisor.

If you would like to use a published test not on this list, or would like to add a test to the list, please do contact a psychology technician.

Activism – The Activism Orientation Scale (AOS) – The questionnaire is freely available here with background info in this article.

Anger – The Clinical Anger Scale – Questionnaire is freely available on this website with background info in this article.

Belief in Good Luck – The Belief in Good Luck Scale – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Belonging – Need to Belong Scale – The questionnaire and background is freely available here.

“Big 5” Personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) – This is freely available for research purposes from the author’s website, here.

Body Anxiety – Social Physique Anxiety Scale (SPAS) – The questionnaire is freely available here with background in this article.

Body Attitudes (men) – Male Body Attitudes Scale (MBAS) – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Body Awareness – The Body Awareness Questionnaire – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Body Esteem (women and men) – The Body Esteem Scale – Information on the scale and relevant publications is available here, you will need to email the authors (details in the link) to use the scale.

Body Shape (women and men) – The Body Shape Questionnaire – The questionnaire is freely available here with background in this article.

Coping style – The Coping Styles Questionnaire for Social Situations – The questionnaire and background is freely available here.

Curiosity – Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI) – The questionnaire is freely available here with background in this article.

Depression – University Students’ Depression Inventory (USDI) – This article contains the factor analysis of the USDI – use the Methods section and the table with final 30 factors to re-build the questionnaire.

Depression, Anxiety and Stress – Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (DASS) – long version (42 items) of the questionnaire can be found here with background info in this article. Short version (21 items) is freely available here with background discussed in this article. Use this source to cite both versions of DASS.

Dieting – The Dieting Beliefs Scale – The questionnaire and background is available here, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Environment – Environmental Attitudes – Questionnaire and background info can be found in this article.

Ethical Position – Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) – Questionnaire and background is freely available here.

Facebook Use – The Facebook Intensity Scale (FBI) – Questionnaire is freely available here with background information in this article.

Family Distress – The Brief Family Distress Scale – Questionnaire is freely available here with background info in this article.

Family Life – The Satisfaction with Family Life Scale – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Fear of being found out – Imposterism Scale – Questionnaire is freely available here with background info in this article.

Flourishing – The Flourishing Scale measures an individual’s self-perceived success in areas such as relationships, self-esteem, purpose and optimism – Questionnaire and background is freely available here.

Friendship – The Friendship Questionnaire – The questionnaire and background is available here, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Friendship (costs and benefits) – Costs and Benefits of Friendship Questionnaire – Questionnaire is freely available here with background in this article.

Music Preferences – Short Test of Music Preference (STOMP) – Questionnaire and background is freely available here.

Nature – The Connectedness to Nature Scale, a measure of individuals’ feeling in community with nature – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Narcissism – Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale – Questionnaire and is freely available here with background in this article.

Optimism – The Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) – Questionnaire and background is freely available here.

Pain – This journal article provides full details and assessments of 7 measures to assess pain, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Sleep-related worry – The Anxiety and Preoccupation about Sleep Questionnaire (APSQ) – Questionnaire is freely available here with background in this article.

Social Anxiety – Social Anxiety In University Students – Questionnaire and background is freely available here.

Social Anxiety – Social Anxiety Questionnaire for Adults (SAQ-30) – Questionnaire is freely available here with background info in this article.

Social Phobia – Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Social Phobia and Anxiety – MHS Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory – Copyright: 1 printed manual and 24 test booklets held in the psychology lab store*

Social Support – The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Social Support – Social Support Inventory – this article contains factor analysis of the inventory. Use the Methods section and the table with final factors to re-build the questionnaire.

Spiritual Connections – The Spiritual Connection Questionnaire (SCQ48) assesses the experience of a “sense of connection” with the universe, people, nature and places. The questionnaire is freely available here with background in this article.

Stress – The Perceived Stress Scale – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article.

Stress and PTSD – The Impact of Events Scale – The questionnaire can be freely downloaded from numerous sites, including here.

Systematising – Systematising Quotient – Questionnaire is freely available here with background info in this article.

Teasing about physical appearance – The Perception of Teasing Scale (POTS) – The questionnaire and background is available in this journal article, you may need to access this via the library computers.

Temptations to drink – Temptations to Drink Instrument – Questionnaire is freely available here with background in this article.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the list above, these websites also contain a wealth of free, validated measures:

Autism – The Autism Research Centre has a wide range of freely available tests related to autism and aspergers syndrome in children and adults.

Drug/alcohol related – The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction maintains the Evaluation Instruments Bank (EIB) which is an online archive of freely available instruments for evaluating drug-related interventions. This also includes wellbeing/self esteem instruments.

Health psychology -The Falmer library has a paper copy of “Measures in health psychology: a user’s portfolio” which contains a number of measures under the following themes: pain and pain behaviours, stress, emotion and life events, coping, social support, health status and health related quality of life, illness, symptoms, disability and recovery, expectations and experience of healthcare, individual and demographic differences, causal and control beliefs, beliefs and knowledge about health and illness and health-related behaviour.

More Social Science – Many of the measures in the list above come from the Measurement Instrument Database for the Social Sciences (MIDSS). This contains over 500 free tests for collecting data from across the social sciences on a wide range of topics (e.g. autism, health, pain). If you can’t see what you would like in the list above you would do well to search the MIDSS more fully.

Psychological tests for student use – York University has a selection of free measures here.

Looking to do a perception or cognition experiment? The lab can offer software PsyCog, which contains a number of freely available, ready built psychology experiments. See the Table of Content on this website to get an overview of what’s available.

If you find any of the measures on these or other sites useful please let a psychology technician know, so they can add them to the list.